Things I Read That I Love #140: A Girl In Black Eyeliner and High-Top Sneakers

HELLO and welcome to the 88th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about Miranda Lambert! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.

An Evening at the Waldorf(December 1978), by Jean and Bud Ince for Gourmet– I was skeptical about how “this delightful, timeless account of young love and an old hotel inspired more responses from our readers than anything else ever printed in the magazine” but then I read it and was like AWWWWWW.

A Sea Story(May 2004), by William Langewiesche for The Atlantic– This was so intense! Like he really puts you there in the scene of all these people trying to run for their lives when the ferry Estonia drowned in 1994. “On a stormy night on the Baltic Sea, more than 850 people lost their lives when a luxurious ferry sank below the waves. From a mass of material, including official and unofficial reports and survivor testimony, our correspondent has distilled an account of the Estonia’s last moments—part of his continuing coverage for the magazine of anarchy on the high seas.”

The Beautiful Imperfection of Magnolia (August 2014), by Nathan Rabin for The Dissolve – I loved Magnolia so much and so I also loved reading about Magnolia so much. Sometimes life is just that simple.

Happiness is a Pink Gun (August 2014), by Alice Bolin for The Morning News – This is about female country artists but mostly Miranda Lambert, who apparently is married to that guy who hosts that show about the music with the smarmy maroon 5 fellow? I think. She sings songs on the radio about the radio! Also they mention Dolly Parton quite a bit, you can’t go wrong there.

You’re 16. You’re a Pedophile But You Don’t Want To Hurt Anyone, What Do You Do Now?(August 2014), by Luke Malone for medium – I listened to this story on This American Life when I was driving to Los Angeles, specifically right around when I was driving past Tejon Ranch or whatever it’s called. I think this essay is different than the radio story but only a little bit. It’s a lot of ideas that you’ve never really considered before.

Working Anything But 9 to 5 (August 2014), by Jodi Kantor and photos by Sam Hodgson for The New York Times – The horrors of retail scheduling were bad enough when I was in my early 20s in the early 2000s, I cannot fathom how hard it must be for a mother these days with automated scheduling. Apparently, however, when reporters reached out to Starbucks, they actually responded! After this story was published, Starbucks committed to revising its work scheduling policies to improve stability and consistency for its baristas. So that’s neat.

What I Saw In Ferguson (August 2014), by Jelani Cobb for The New Yorker– “Nothing that happened in Ferguson, Missouri, on the fourth night since Michael Brown died at the hands of a police officer there, dispelled the notion that this is a place where law enforcement is capable of gross overreaction.”

The Internet’s Original Sin: Advertising, by Ethan Zuckerman for The Atlantic – I have a dream that if everybody would just join A+, we’d never have to run ads by anybody besides small indie businesses (at obviously reduced rates) doing truly cool stuff. So everybody please join A+! “Users have been so well trained to expect surveillance that even when widespread, clandestine government surveillance was revealed by a whistleblower, there has been little organized, public demand for reform and change… It’s unlikely that our willingness to accept online surveillance reflects our trust in the American government, which is at historic lows. More likely, we’ve been taught that this is simply how the Internet works: If we open ourselves to ever-increasing surveillance—whether from corporations or governments—the tools and content we want will remain free of cost.”

Riese is the 33-year-old CEO, CFO and Editor-in-Chief of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, blogger, fictionist, copywriter, video-maker and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York City, and now lives in The Bay Area. Her work has appeared in nine books including "The Bigger the Better The Tighter The Sweater: 21 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image & Other Hazards Of Being Female," magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are!

I love Miranda Lambert, and reading about her. Brandi Carlile sang at her wedding, so I have to hope she gets it. I’m proud of her for becoming a country star without sacrificing (too much) of the quality of songwriting she started out with.

Whoa I’ve actually been talking a lot this week about female vs. male country singers and also the craziness of retail scheduling! The Miranda Lambert/female country article basically restated the entire argument I had with my coworker yesterday. That Miranda Lambert/Carrie Underwood song came on the radio, and my coworker complained that he “hates girl power songs” and doesn’t actually like country songs sung by females. I got back at him by turning up the radio every time Miranda Lambert came on.

I don’t even know how to respond to Leslie Jamison’s writing anymore. I’m paralyzed by how good and true it is, always. I’m also measuring up how I haven’t had thoughts that deep and analytical, haven’t written anything longer than a paragraph, for too long. There’s sort of a one-sided conversation going in my head about The Empathy Exams, and it’s mostly informed by what Jamison has herself said about the work (e.g. on Longform, in that Guardian article). This is not a bad thing. It’s so incredible to read her work and then to read her responses to her writing of the work and then to read her responses to other people’s responses to her work!

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